Ask most genealogists about land records and they'll tell you that they are
full of dry, dull legal descriptions and that they are only helpful in establishing
that an ancestor bought or sold land. I will be the first to admit that the
land records are one of the less glamorous records that we use, but they are
far from useless.

When used effectively, land records may help you to identify relationships,
establish when your ancestor passed away or clue you in to a discrepancy
in other records. Personally, I have found land records to do all this
and more.

Tap into the potential of land records.

Buying and Selling Land

When our ancestor purchases land, he is referred to as the grantee or
the patentee. If he is selling land, then he is referred to as the grantor.
Finding these records sometimes depends on how and from whom he is acquiring
the land.

For land bought from the federal government, the first place to look for information
about the land is the Bureau
of Land Management. Their searchable database of land patents issued from
1820 to 1908 is a great resource, and the fact that is available online makes
it all the easier to search. This index is to public domain land that the government
owned. As such, there are certain states that you will not find entries for,
including the original thirteen colonies.

Most of the time, you will find yourself spending time with the deed books
in a county courthouse. These books are where the deeds were recorded, usually
by the county clerk. Because they were recorded by the county clerk you will
not find original signatures for your ancestor or his wife, but you will find
the complete deed and the names of everyone involved.

Finding the deeds that pertain to your ancestor usually means turning to the
grantor and/or grantee indexes. These indexes must be used thoroughly to ensure
that you have accounted for all of the land.

All Present and Accounted For

Because the genealogical value of land records is often underestimated, researchers
often don't spend as much time with the records as they should. They quickly
scan the available indexes and perhaps they actually look at each land record,
but they seldom spend much time evaluating what they find in the deeds.

Occasionally, a deed record will mention specific relationships between the
people listed in the deed, but I find that the strength of the deeds is in knowing
that I have accounted for each transaction made by my ancestor. It is kind of
like creating a land balance sheet of sorts. If I can account for all the acres,
and have an equal number of acres being sold as were being bought, then I know
there are no surprises. To do this means I must not only read the deed but also
make some notations about the deed and keep a running tally of acres bought
and sold.

A colleague used land records in an effort to identify thirteen daughters.
She was researching an ancestor and had been unable to account for all the acres
that were purchased. This clued her in to do some further research and she discovered
one of the ancestor's daughters and where she was living. This was a number
of years after the death of the original ancestor who purchased the land. Had
she not been adding up the total number of acres both bought and sold, she might
not have continued her search for additional land records some twenty years
after the death of the person who bought the land. As a result she wouldn't
have discovered the records she needed to identify and establish the location
of the last daughter.

Each deed, whether written in rectangular survey, lots, or metes and bounds
will tell you how much land was purchased or sold. You can keep this tally easily
enough. Take a piece of paper and divide it down the middle. On the left record
acres that are being purchased by your ancestor. On the right list the acres
being sold by that same ancestor. Keep a running total. If they do not equal
each other then you know you are missing a record.

Clues in the Index

An ancestor of mine, Benjamin Standerfer, had a 1/6 undivided interest in a
piece of property that he sold. When I was just beginning my research I didn't
understand the gold mine that this land record gave me. As I became more experienced,
I realized that the deed was letting me know that there were 5/6s of that property
that I had not yet accounted for and should see who owned it.

I returned to the index for Standerfers and began to look at the names of those
who the Standerfers were selling the land to, looking for the same man who purchased
the land from my Benjamin. This netted me three more deeds to the same property.
I read the deeds and was able to verify that it was the same person purchasing
all of the pieces, which made sense since the property was undivided. Next,
I looked at the grantee index to see if I could pick up the other two pieces
based on the name of the individual, a Jacob Seass, who was buying the property.
It did show me one more piece, from a female who was married, and therefore
no longer a Standerfer. But I was still stuck with 1/6 unaccounted for.

A return to grantor index seemed in order so back to the Standerfers in the
grantor index I went. This time, though, I looked at the land description seeing
if I could find another 1/6 undivided parcel. Sure enough I did find one that
I had not noticed before, primarily because it was being sold to a different
person. I got a copy of that deed and then turned once more to the indexes again
going to the grantee index to see if Jacob Seass had purchased anything from
the person who bought the last parcel of land. It turned out that he did but
that the land description had not been as detailed. I missed this in my original
look at the index because this person wasn't a Standerfer.

The indexes, when used in a variety of ways showed me all six deeds and the
other five deeds mentioned the father from whom the six children had inherited
their 1/6 interest. Why hadn't Benjamin's deed had the same information? It
appeared that the book in which his deed was found was a reconstructed book.
The volume just before and just after the one with Benjamin's deed were all
hand written, whereas his deed was a typewritten form. This led me to believe
that it was damaged in some way and had to be reconstructed. During the reconstruction,
valuable information either wasn't included or wasn't known so I wasn't able
to find the name of Benjamin's father until I spent a little extra time digging
in the indexes and the deeds.

In Conclusion

Land records may be full of legalese, but they may also be the clue to the
rest of the story. For years I had ignored the screaming clue about the land
Benjamin was selling. When I stopped to think about it, though, I not only found
the other land records but also the reason that those six individuals had the
land in the first place. This helped me establish relationships between the
children and their father.